Jack Higgins has been sentenced to two years imprisonment, suspended for two years, after pleading guilty to making a motor claim worth £59,987 for a holiday crash in a rented Range Rover that was falsified. He was also ordered to pay £6,000 to City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department to cover the cost of a voice analysis carried out as part of the investigation, and to complete 300 hours of unpaid work.

Detective Constable Stuart Osbourne, from the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED), said: “Higgins thought he could take his insurer for a ride and defraud it out of a significant sum of money. Fraudulent claims like this push up the cost of insurance premiums for honest policyholders.

“The major pitfall for Higgins was the indisputable evidence against him. We conducted an extensive investigation to show that, not only had he been in the UK when the collision allegedly occurred, he forged the documents he sent to his insurer.

“Higgins has now been left with a criminal record and must pay an additional £6,000 worth of costs. IFED and the insurance industry will work together to make sure that submitting bogus claims for road traffic collisions doesn’t pay, wherever in the world the collision is said to have taken place.”